cooking.nytimes.com

For parties or picnics, meat that you've prepared the day before is a time-saving trick worth adopting. Everyone knows that beef tenderloin, served hot, is a fail-safe dish for a dinner party. It comes out of the oven caramelized, glistening and perfect. If the primary goal is to serve it chilled or room temperature, however, the trick is to swab the meat with flavor — lots of chile powder, oregano, garlic, mustard and olive oil — before sliding it into the oven (roast it rare so it stays tender and juicy). The next day all you need to do is slice and serve, no compensatory condiments necessary. The flavors of mustard and chile, carried by the fat in the olive oil, have penetrated the meat beautifully.